The Nanny At Number 43

by Nicola Cassidy

  Kitty treated the ribbon like an animal she’d rescued, washing it in the sink some nights, laying it out beside her in the bed to dry. It began to fray at the ends and I told her if she didn’t stop playing with it, it would fray all the way up and she’d have none left then.

  That frightened her and she was more careful then, leaving it under her pillow for a long time, not putting it in her hair as much, until one day I got one of the kitchen hands to singe it a bit on the fire and it sealed it and Kitty was delighted.

  “It won’t fray now, Maggie, will it?”

  “No,” I said. “It won’t.”

  And she said, “Thank you, Maggie. Would you like to wear it?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “It’s yours.”

  “You can have it, just for today,” she said.

  And she looked so earnest under that mop of curls, that I took it and said all right and I fixed it in my hair and I thought how I’d go to Christy that night and let him see me done up a bit.

  I’d felt he’d been pulling away from me, like he wasn’t happy with me any more, that I wasn’t satisfying him the way I used to.

  If I lost Christy, I’d have nothing.

  Nothing in the world.

  And so Kitty went off, with the other children, running round the yard, and I touched the ribbon in my hair and thought what a sweetheart she was and back with me to the laundry, where the piles of soiled sheets and cottons were waiting for me.

  There was protection in that ribbon. I should never have taken it from Kitty, I should have insisted that she kept it and not have put it in my own dark, straight hair.

  I think it was blessed, some sort of divine protection my mother had managed to provide for her.

  The only thing she had ever given her, in the whole world.

  The tears burst from my eyes as I ran from Christy’s house, the picture of that woman and her big white breasts plastered in my mind. I raced down the lane, past the workhouse wall, past the cottages, past the huts bundled into the side of the road. I ran all the way down the hill till I got to the Dublin road.

  The moon was out, hanging over the town, casting silvery riverways along the black water under the bridge. I took a minute to catch my breath, to wipe at my eyes, where the tears were flowing, their own little rivers on my face.

  I could not believe Christy would hurt me like that. That he would push away all our whisperings and loving and kissing and take that dirty tramp into his bed.

  I knew it though. I knew he’d been straying. I’d been feeling it these past few weeks, in the way he was with me. The look on his face when he answered the door. The way he grimaced when I talked, as if I was boring him, intruding on that little hovel of a house of his.

  The way he didn’t say anything when I talked about me getting out of the workhouse and bringing Kitty with me.

  Kitty.

  I spluttered and bent over, panting from the running, choking on the emotion that erupted all the way up from my stomach.

  It was me that raised her, that minded her, looked after her.

  I told her never to go near that part of the laundry. It was too dangerous with the vats bubbling and the steam and the size of them.

  But she forgot. Lost in a game of hide and seek with the others. Up onto the little bridge that went right over those scalding vats and down she fell, her two little legs plunging into the steaming, boiling water.

  A terrible accident, they said. So unfortunate.

  The skin peeled off like an onion. It had gone past her waist, all over her bottom. One whole half of her body.

  She screamed and she screamed and then she fainted with the fright.

  I was in the ironing room and by the time I got to her she was in a bed and the nurse had applied a paste and a gauze to her legs and the bottom of her torso.

  But we all knew.

  There would be no coming back from that. You didn’t get scalded and the skin burnt off your body like that and live.

  In and out of consciousness she went. Coming and going. They’d given her something for the pain, but still she’d waken, realise the scald in her legs, cry out and then fall back in a faint onto the bed.

  I sat, holding her fingers, the ribbon wrapped round my hand and hers, binding us together.

  I should never have taken it off her.

  “Kit,” I whispered softly, “Kitty, you’ll be all right, you just got a bad burn. You have to be brave now and let the doctors dress it and you’ll be grand. It’ll take a while to heal, but you’ll be grand.”

  She’d never be grand.

  She was absolutely destroyed.

  I sat there, tending to her, wiping a facecloth across her tiny forehead, putting my hand into a glass of water and letting the droplets run off my fingers, into her little rosebud mouth.

  She lingered. Coming back to us and going again. Crying and murmuring.

  I sat beside her all night, as the shift changed in the infirmary, and in the morning, as the grey light of dawn filtered through the bars on the window at the edge of the ceiling, I realised I’d fallen into a groggy sleep, stretched out across her little arm.

  The white starched infirmary covers appeared before my eyes. I sat up and saw Kitty, the trauma of yesterday sweeping back into my addled head.

  I ran my hand across her little forehead and her eyelashes flickered.

  She opened her eyes and she saw me and there was a little smile before the burning kicked back in and her forehead creased and she started to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it, Maggie. It was an accident.”

  “I know, pet,” I said. “Shush now, don’t you worry.”

  “I thought it would be a good place to hide, but then I slipped.”

  “Shhh,” I told her.

  “Where’s Mama?” she said.

  “Ma’s not here, I’m here,” I soothed.

  She hadn’t asked after Ma in a long time.

  “Mama,” she said and started crying again.

  “Mama will be here later,” I told her, lying, anything to try and ease her suffering. “She’ll be here with a big bar of chocolate for you, so she will.”

  Why was she looking for Ma now, after everything I’d done for her, why was she still looking for Ma?

  The doctor came and shook his head. He took me aside and spoke in low, mumbling voice. “You need to be a brave girl now and prepare for the worst.”

  I already knew it. I wasn’t stupid.

  I nodded and went back to keeping my vigil at her bed.

  And then he appeared, Mr. McGovern, all smirky and slithering, like the snake that he was.

  “Little Kate,” he said as he stood over the bed, his face all serious and pouting. “The poor mite. How is she holding up?”

  He knew right well how she was holding up.

  “It’s Kitty,” I said.

  “A terrible accident,” he said. “Don’t you worry. You stay here now as long as you need.”

  I sat in silence, blocking out his presence, annoying him by not responding to him.

  “I’ve asked the nurse to give her everything they can for the pain.”

  Sure he was a saint indeed.

  Would I have let us come here if I’d known what was going to happen to Kitty? Could we have run away, to a different town maybe?

  But I knew we would always have ended up in the workhouse. I’d been born here and Ma too.

  I gripped Kitty’s hand and swore an oath, one that had been swirling round my head, ever since I was old enough to understand what was going on behind that curtain, listening to my ma going at it with another of her filthy bastard johns.

  I would be nothing like my mother.

  I would make my own life.

  I would have everything I ever wanted, as a result of my own hands.

  No longer would I sell my body for shillings.

  Never would I touch a drop of the drink.

  I would get out of this workhouse and I would start a li
fe, one where I had the power, one where I was in control.

  She passed at lunchtime, drawing her final tiny breaths, laboured, in pain, floating away when they gave her a full dose of the opium.

  And still I didn’t cry.

  I went back to the dining hall and I ate my pease soup with the others and I thought how I’d go to see Christy that evening, and he’d tell me what to do.

  They kept her body in the infirmary, she would be buried in the morning. An unmarked pauper’s grave. For an unwanted pauper girl.

  After seeing Christy with that woman, after running down the town and onto the streets, I stayed out the whole night. Walking, wandering. I went down to the quays and I stood there watching the working girls and the men coming and going.

  I could smell the taverns, the smoke and the stench of old beer wafting from the open doors, the late houses, the early houses, all the bodies pressed together, damp from the rain, drunk and merry.

  I thought about going into the Cellars, sauntering right up to the bar and waiting till someone bought me a whiskey or a port and then having a talk and a laugh and forgetting all about Kitty and Christy and what had happened to me that day.

  Forgetting that I was alone in the world now.

  But I didn’t go into the taverns. I knew the drink and the crush of the bodies and those men looking me up and down, wanting me, would make me feel better for a while. But it would all come back to the same thing. That by doing that, I’d be going just the way Ma did.

  I wasn’t going to become Ma.

  And so I walked. Out under the bridge, past the quays, past the ships moored, gangplanks out, their lamps burning, their goods stacked up high on the shore.

  The air was fresh, down by the river, out along Donor’s Green. It grew black, so dark I could hardly see, except for the silvery light that lit the river, a shimmering path flowing straight in front of me.

  What would it be like if I jumped in? If I went to the edge, looked and tipped my body over, plopping into the blackness, ripples circling out towards the far bank, edging out to sea?

  Would seaweeds and soft tufty water greens stroke my body as I drowned?

  Would I meet Kitty down there? Would I see my father, find out who he really was?

  I walked to the end of the green and I sat there on the wet ground, listening to the sounds of the park, late at night. Rustling, whoops, a holler in the distance, and somewhere, the sounds of panting.

  No. I wouldn’t drown. Not tonight.

  Somehow, I would get out of that place. I would get away from Christy, from the streets where our mother raised us, where the memory of her echoed in its dirty, broken-plastered walls.

  Something changed in me that night. I had poured all my love into Kitty. And now she was gone.

  It showed that love did nothing, proved nothing. It was empty.

  From now on, I would only worry about me.

  From now on, I would be in control.

  I would have the power.

  The power over anything I wanted in the world.

  Even life itself.

  What did I care any more? I had nothing left to live for anyway.

  Chapter 29

  Mrs.McHugh

  After the first few weeks, when the shock of losing Mick and waking up each day alone had become a familiar ache, when her routine was settled and her days had a particular, predictable pattern to them, the dreams started coming. At first, the woman was blocked out, shadow-like. She couldn’t see her face, but she would appear with her back to her, a silhouette.

  The woman appeared in all sorts of manners. In the dream, she would be walking down the road and the woman would step out in front of her. Or she would be attending Mass, kneeling on the pew and the woman would be sitting in front of her, a twitch of her shawl telling it was her – and just as the woman turned to reveal who she was, she’d wake up.

  The woman came in the early morning dreams, the ones where she was moving between the deep sleep of night into the sketchy, twilight dawn. Sometimes she would awake with such force and wonder what had woken her. And then as she drifted back, she remembered. It was the woman. The woman in the dark shawl, with the hidden face. The woman who was haunting her dreams.

  At first, she thought it might have been her own mother, who often used to be in her dreams when she was caring for her. But her mother had been a heavy-set woman and this woman was thinner and shorter. She knew it wasn’t her, just by the aura of her. Her mother was a lovely woman, a gentle, laughing woman.

  This woman was something different.

  On the nights when the woman didn’t appear in her dreams, she awoke feeling fresh, glad that she had managed a night’s sleep without being haunted by the strange, eerie presence. On the nights and mornings when she did appear, she awoke feeling tired and strained.

  She said some prayers at Mass, praying for better sleep and calmer dreams.

  She brought it up with the priest at confession, one Saturday night, before evening Mass.

  “Father, there is a woman and she is coming to me in my dreams. I am most disturbed by it all, and it’s affecting my sleep.”

  “Are you having thoughts during the day, of this woman?” asked the priest, from behind the grille.

  “No, Father, I don’t know who she is. But I feel like I’m being haunted.”

  The priest was quiet for a moment.

  “It’s not unusual to have bad dreams when you are grieving. You’ve suffered a great loss. Disturbed dreams can be most common.”

  “What if it’s the devil, Father?”

  “Do you feel that it’s the devil?”

  “I don’t think she has a good spirit, Father.”

  “Have you noticed anything unusual outside of your dreams?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Anything strange going on in the house?”

  “No, Father.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. I will say a prayer for your disturbed dreams. If anything does happen, you can come to me and I will come and bless the house.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “And try saying two decades of the rosary in bed, before you go to sleep.”

  “I will, Father.”

  After her confession to the priest, she slept soundly for two nights. And then the woman returned.

  And this time she saw her face.

  She sorted out Mick’s particulars quickly. She got a cheque from the dockers’ union and she would get a portion of his pension. It meant she didn’t need to work, didn’t need to try and sort out anything with Number 43. She could live comfortably.

  When she was able, she went through Mick’s things. She kept his cap and his pipe but she put all his clothes into a big basket and hawked it down to the second-hand shop, the good one on narrow West Street, so that some other man could make use of them. She got a few shillings for them and with that she bought flowerpots for his grave.

  Mick would like that, her being all busy and not maudlin.

  Night-time was the worst, sitting there on her own, thinking about him.

  During the day she could occupy herself and most evenings there were callers or she’d go down to one of the neighbours. But when she got in, when it was late and he wasn’t there to greet her, that was the worst.

  She wondered if she’d ever get over the sadness, if the grief that welled up then, choking her, making her head feel like it was swelling and bursting, would always be there. She expected it would. How could it not?

  And then there was Betty. She thought they were joking at first when they told her. But their solemn faces and acknowledgment that she was a ‘good age’ saw the laugh catch in her throat.

  Her husband and her closest friend, gone within days of each other.

  She never got to talk to Betty about Mick. She never got to talk to her about what happened at Number 43. She had to deal with everything herself, let the thoughts swirl around and around till it made her feel dizzy and she had to start
finding ways to stop thinking about things.

  She was going to go mad.

  A few weeks after Betty’s death, a letter arrived on thick paper summoning her to a meeting with Mr. Jennings, Betty’s solicitor, on Fair Street. The letter made her feel nervous and she fretted in the days before the appointment. She wondered what on earth he wanted with her? She knew the pub and the rooms above had been left to Jimmy’s nephew, a man who lived in England and had not been back to Ireland for years.

  On the morning of the appointment she got up early to wash her hair. She put on her Sunday clothes. She felt she should, going to meet a solicitor on Fair Street like that.

  She walked slowly down the North Road, turning left onto Fair Street, allowing plenty of time so that she wouldn’t appear red-faced or out of breath. Here the railings gleamed in the morning sun, the doors set off by polished brass letterboxes.

  The buildings stretched into the sky, doctors, solicitors, dentists, a flurry of people making their way up and down marble and granite steps to their appointments.

  Carriages stood, waiting for their passengers to return.

  Mr. Jennings’ door had a brass knocker with a ferocious-looking lion on it. She knocked and waited to be let in.

  A flustered young man opened the door and ushered her in.

  He sat her on a leather sofa in the hall and went upstairs, presumably to announce her presence. When he came back down, he ignored her and went into an office off the hall. She could see him going back to his paperwork which was piled high, sighing as he tackled another set of folders.

  After an age, a door opened upstairs and a deep voice called out: ‘Mrs. McHugh!’

  She felt nervous as she climbed the stairs. If Mick had been alive, he would have come with her. She didn’t like having to attend to business on her own.

  “Mrs. McHugh,” said Mr. Jennings, “please, take a seat.”

  Mr. Jennings was lanky with dark hair and glasses. His deep voice was at odds with his appearance. He looked nothing like she thought Betty’s solicitor would. What was Betty doing dealing with this chap?